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Chapter 330: First Training Session with the National Team II

Kelechi Ihenacho from Team A passed the ball to Alex Iwobi to kick off the session and the players of the two teams began moving across the field, with the Team B players in their yellow bibs chasing after the players in Team A who did not wear bibs over their training vest.

Jason was among the Team B players running at the Team A players.

It had been a while since his duties required him to actively chase down the opponents like he was currently doing because, at Porto, Sergio Conceicao had usually freed him of all defensive duties and made him fully focus on running at the opponents down the flanks, helping the team break through the final third.

The defensive duties were usually left to the other midfielders and the defenders, but it seemed like this Super Eagles manager thought differently about his usefulness to the team with him putting Jason in a center-attacking midfielder position rather than a winger that he had always played as.

Luckily, Jason could play as an attacking midfielder despite his dislike for defensive duties so he quickly got down to it and chased down the ball, but the ball was soon moved down the flanks and Jason stuck with his marker instead.

Team A quickly went on the attack, but before long they could no longer hold on to the ball and the ball fell into the hands… or legs of the opposing team.

The two teams played well as they constantly tried to one-up the other, but it did not take a genius to know that there was a certain disjointed flow in their movements.

They were performing well with each other and the ball was flowing smoothly between them, but the level of coordination didn’t match up to what one would expect from a professional team and there were many wrong movements both on and off the ball which ended up causing problems in their gameplay.

It also did not help that they were playing without any specific instructions from the manager, or that some of the players were not playing in the positions they usually played at their clubs.

Jason was also affected by this problem.

He had to expend a lot of his energy to chase after his marker and once he managed to get the ball, he had to lay it off to teammates who were further up front so that they could start an attack which was the exact opposite of what he did at Porto where he usually just watched and waited for the ball to reach him before taking off down the flanks, leading the attack and running through opposition players before making a final pass.

He usually only ever passed whenever there wasn’t any way to start an attack, but now that he was playing as a central attacking midfielder, he couldn’t hold on to the ball for too long as he was in the center where the number of opposing players were the highest and they weren’t hesitant to tackle him.

It also didn’t take long for Jason to notice the intense physicality of the Nigerian players as they slammed into him constantly.

It was like playing against ten Pepe(s).

Even Ahmed Musa, the Super Eagles captain, who was the smallest player on the opposing team moved with such an imposing posture that one couldn’t easily push him off the ball.

Ten minutes after the training match started, Jason was already heaving as he thought to himself,

‘This is actually a lot more fun than I expected.’

The match was rough, he was playing in an awkward position, and he hadn’t been able to get anything going because of the disjointed movements of the teammates and his own duties, but all this just pushed him and fueled his excitement.

Training at Porto hardly ever felt this intense and it felt like a lot of things were becoming clearer in his head and his body movements seemed to be loosening up and adjusting to such a rough style of play.

However, for now, Jason had to put all that aside and focus on the training session because it had been ten minutes, and apart from a few potshots that did little to worry their respective goalkeepers, the two sets of players hadn’t been able to get any attacks going and Jason didn’t like that.

They couldn’t carry this kind of performance into a match.

Jason wouldn’t allow himself to play like this as it annoyed him and he had made up his mind.

‘Fuck this CAM position, I’m playing how I want,’ he thought to himself as Chidera Ejuke took a throw-in and sent the ball at him.

Jason caught the ball on his chest and while holding off Etebo who was trying to hassle him into leaving the ball.

Luckily, he managed to hold off Etebo long enough to bring the ball to the ground and once the ball was under control, Jason took off to the opponent’s penalty box, not bothering to pass the ball like he was doing earlier.

Also, instead of cutting in towards the center, he went down the right flank with the ball as a winger would, and before long he came face-to-face with his Porto teammate, Zaidu Sanusi.

“You aren’t going anywhere bro,” Zaidu almost growled as he squared off against Jason.

“Sure,” Jason replied before proceeding to do a reverse-elastico to confuse Zaidu and then bolting further down the right wing with the little space he had managed to create.

Zaidu immediately gave chase but Jason had already gotten enough space to send a cross in and his leg swept towards the ball as if to send a cross in.

Zaidu Sanusi immediately lunged into a sliding tackle to try and block the cross, but his surprise knew no bounds when Jason’s leg came to a hard stop behind the ball before he swept the ball backwards, leaving Zaidu to fly out of his path, tackling nothing but air.

Not even giving a glance to the sliding Zaidu, Jason took off uninterrupted into the penalty box and sent a ground pass at Victor Osimhen who had freed himself in the penalty box and Osimhen didn’t hesitate to send the ball flying past the Super Eagles first choice goal keeper, Maduka Okoye.